Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. And today's episode is all about mastering failure.

I feel like we talked so much about learning from failure and somehow we're all still terrified

of it. So how do we start to shift our mindset and our comfort levels with failing a little bit more?

I've got some thoughts.

So, fun fact about me, my gym is my happy place. It's like my Disney world. I love being there,

and I think it's a huge part of what keeps me successful in juggling all the balls I have in the air. Also, vanity is real and bathing suit season is not too far off.

One of the things I love about working out is that at the gym, failure is literally the thing we

strive for. It's the word we use when we couldn't possibly eke out one more rep. Failure in exercise

is accomplishment. It means you left it all on the floor and now

it's time to celebrate. But at work, failure is still kind of the F word. We want to learn from it.

We want to use it to teach us how to move forward, but mostly we just hide from it. Or we avoid it

by making super safe choices, which keep us from

failing, but also keep us from creating or experimenting. It keeps us kind of vanilla, and I think we need a

little bit more chocolate sauce on there. So if you're an innovator at heart, or even just a

wannabe innovator, and you want to create more space for testing and learning,

and yes, failing at work. How can you do this without feeling like you're putting your job on the

line? I think it starts with redefining failure. When someone drops the ball or misses a deadline,

or they send out that unproofed campaign, we call that failure.

But that isn't failure.

That's straight up carelessness.

Those are undesirable outcomes due to bad action or inaction.

Failure, on the other hand, is an undesirable outcome resulting from a good action,

...